play a critical role in helping to expand the preservation to include cultural heritage assets and also ensure that meaningful policies related to cultural preservation aren incorporated into element. our second recommendation which would support cultural heritage conservation initiatives and particularly the suggestions to question a morning i received a -- morning i received mayoral directive. as you know mayor lee earlier issued a directive for affordable housing as a result a multi-group was formed to make policies and administrative action that would support development of new affordable housing. last month we learned about this directive about the may or's office of housing $30 million to

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purchase small residential buildings from proneers -- property owners for renting at a reasonable rate and some can be around the cultural preservation. finally our recommends no. 6, the last one we wanted to highlight which is much more long-term goal but to establish a citywide historical preservation program with targeted benefits. we believe that a designation program would better enable the city to identify resources for the government sponsored assistance program and financial initiative incentives. it's also important to note that there are models of the designation program for intangible group heritage for the intangible groups of social and humanity, barcelona has a

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resource cat categorical heritage and japan since 1950 s and san francisco's designation program would be able to fit the needs. >> just to wraup up our presentation. much can be done immediately to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive citywide program. first of course as desiree

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mentioned social is the preservation element that cultural heritage and social heritage resources be encompassed within the policy in the preservation element and heritage has also testified regarding places where we think these policies are incorporated where we can continue doing it later on in the agenda. desiree mentioned a morning i received -- mayoral heritage and other related agencies that can provide benefits, support to these types of resources and look at the problem more comprehensively. short-term maybe a little bit

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aspirational within six months and with the cultural and heritage aspects we think it's not unrealistic for the hpc to endorse a consistent methodology that can be applied citywide. heritage is eager to work with the commission or the department to develop recommendations on the most effective incentives and available funding sources to build on existing programs such as cast to provide additional fundings for property acquisitions or financing it's. etc. then from a communicate perspective and if you read a report a real emphasis that we try to make throughout is that these efforts are ultimately steered by the

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committee themselves. so given the work that's been done by the department and resources that are available already, we think it would be enormously helpful to have a web page compiling information and resources that are available. then in the longer term, we think it is important to establish a citywide designation program, again not for regulatory purposes but as a way to identify resources that should be prioritized for public assistance and private assistance to have some kind of common framework to evaluate these properties would be enormously valuable in prioritizing limiting resources. finally hopefully once we have a conservation program laying all that out. that concludes or presentation. i'm happy to take any questions and again this you for the opportunity. >> thank you.

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commissioners? questions off the bat? commissioner johnck? >> well, this is a great report. congratulations on the work that you and desiree and the staff have done. it's wonderful. in just thinking about this more, my basic question is i noticed you made an effort to differentiate between the more traditional term of resources and we've talked about historic resources and we identify as historying -- historic and to the preservation remind staff of the addition of not just historical but natural resources and cultural and that type of thing. we are definitely moving in

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that direction. i would like to ask if you can clarify if it was your intent to move from those resources to assets because assets preventing to physical properties and land and in addition to well buildings, we know we have a value. >> you are right, that was intentional. we did try to propose a terminology that is different than the existing cultural resources terminology, architectural resources that are typically used. we wanted to get away from that for a few reasons because we are not proposing a regulatory or additional ceqa review for these types of assets. and we are trying to not confuse them with the article 10 and article 11

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landmark. that is intentional and certainly when we use the word assets, we intend a very broad interpretation of that term. beyond land and buildings but also getting deeply into intangible realm. >> okay. and just further and then i will leave it to others and maybe staff would like to comment too on how you see this fitting into what you've already got going and what we can move into. the whole idea here of natural resources actually as i was looking into other cities examples of the preservation elements, i saw lool a lot of emphasis on natural resources and particularly interested in our program here and how we are classifying natural resources as part of our heritage preservation program. i noticed you didn't have too much on the area of natural realm. there is a beautiful picture

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of the boat on the water for a water front, so i don't think you mean to exclude that. >> no, absolutely, natural resources can obviously have cultural value as well precisely for sure. we included the photo of the boats to illustrate an alternative business model that very innovative business model to sustain the family's own boat and to help to understand that we are not just talking about building and land that we are talking about other types of values. >> commissioner matsuda? >> thank you, mike, this is a really good report. i'm really happy that you were able to kind of list some priorities that you are recommending for the commission. i think the ones that you've listed are pretty doable. i don't know if the commission is

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working with heritage to pursue these but i think it can work parallel with the planning staff right now and just to reflect back on the motion which was made and passed back in december of 2012, this was really the creation of allen martinez. he was kind to put my name to this. he really wanted to emphasize more incentives which you reiterated today incentives to landlords to promote cultural and heritage assets. i'm hoping mr. martinez will make more comments about that and provide us with specific information. there is a program that was or is i guess being launched right now in los angeles in the little toek 84 i --

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tokyo area called the first cultural eco district. they have a big push to have public transportation go through the city of los angeles and they chose little tokyo as a big hub spot. they said we are going to put this big bus stop or rail stop here and we are going to have it above ground and there was a lot of opposition to that and so to fast forward, the hub stop will be underground, but in addition to that they decided to take it one step further and include other elements to really enhance this transit center so they are going to incorporate green technology, they are going to promote business, they are going to promote partnerships with all these different small businesses communities and the transit department and then to really preserve the

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cultural and community values that currently exist. so mike and i briefly talked about this as kind of a model that we can pick and choose and borrow from as well as this cultural eco district always looked at two particular cities, atlanta and portland in terms of what they are doing to enhance community and social heritage resources. so i just wanted to put it out there. i hope we receive some good public comments as well. >> commissioners, any other comments? commissioner hyland? >> thank you for this report. there was a lot of work put into that. i really appreciate it. i wonder if there was any thought you had to the national register and any connection this work can provide in the evolution of cultural

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resources in the evolution of designation on the national register and the state register as well. was there any piece that connected those? >> well, right now we are trying to not bite off more than we can chew. we are not going to try to reform the national registry yet but we do know there is a connection between the cultural property designation administered by the national park service and the national register. some properties that are designated and we included a couple of examples on the report that have gone on to be listed as the national register. so, i'm honestly not sure beyond what tpc designation is currently doing to try to incorporate these types of assets in the national register program. >> i think we can provide a, it would be an example and i no that

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-- know that on the ledger rej -- register properties integrity can be overlooked bought of the cultural heritage. >> you just reminded me of an article by professor ray raf on the national trust publication form and we quote a sections in one of the paragraph reports that he specifically talks about the integrity of how that excluded the historic preservation types of the national register now and he advocates for revisiting the integrity standards. i'm on the historic preservation fund committee. we recently had a meeting with carol and the historic preservation officer where we talked about this very issue in terms of different

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integrity standards for different types of significant resources depending on the association where there is architectural significance or cultural significance and that's something the state office is well aware of and the citywide latino context study under way and ship an is well aware of the need to have flexibility on integrity. i think it's a really timely discussion right now among preservation professionals, not just here locally but nationwide and it national. >> i'm thinking about the property on haiti haight and ash berry that we can lead the way in recognizing properties like that. >> that's right. the city is also under way

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with the projects like south of market. unfortunately in the report, many of those efforts representing 35 plus years of community organizing the different neighborhoods are not fully implemented. so ghs is the furthest along but it's policies recommendations not being implemented today. other social heritage markets stalled without further action. there is a need for consistent framework for all of this work that's been done forward and create the guidance for other neighborhoods. >> thank you for giving us the framework to help push that forward. >> it's a start. >> commissioner wolfram? >> thank you for this report.

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i had a question about the the can an -- cultural heritage asset. i like the term. it wasn't clear to me on who would be taking a leadership role on that inventory process. are you thinking it's the various communities would be doing that? because sometimes there might be assets that the community is almost gone or lost and sort of orphaned a little bit and your thoughts about the leadership on the inventory because it seems it needs to be done as soon as we can. that's something that these assets are sort of fragile? >> well, we think that the process developed for japan town is the most successful and kind of defensible process and a process that involves the community in every step

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of the way. certainly our focus as i mentioned earlier is that the community must be the leader in identifying what is important to their neighborhood identity. but i think there is a role for the city in providing them with the tools and the guidance for how to do that, the social inventory resources form for japan town i think is a very good start. it's being able to use it as contingent on having a context theme and studied in advance which is all things related which is why we recommend prioritizing identification of cultural themes and on going context studies. we think that's been most successful approach using and providing the methodology that is fairly user friendly. jonathan lamb bird is here. he was there at the time when it was developed and shelley of course as

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well in planning. and my participating in that process it seemed to work be a successful process in terms of listing the communities to help identify the places and resources and assets. >> thank you. commissioner hyland? >> one last thing, i would reiterate or support the commissioner's suggestion of a subcommittee to be happy to be part of this. >> okay. i think we'll open to public comment at this point. i have no speaker cards. any member wishing to speak on this item, please come up to the podium. commission alumni allen martinez. >> i spike -- speak for myself. i would like to thank you for speaking

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on the my nephew that was killed in santa barbara. some of you know about and i will have a recap who worked on the commission back then. as you noticed there were a number of projects on the tonga room, gold dust, eagle bar, to me the tonga room is particularly interesting because i love the place but without it being aybar and restaurant, the decore is meaningless. having a gim with all that stuff is there a pointless. it didn't rise high enough to be a landmark but you put the two together, you put the the experience with the rest of it together with the decore and you have something and

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the case with the eagle bar and the golden lounge, very successful businesses. i remember the first .com boom that the boom put laos a lot of businesses out of businesses and the boom finished and the storefront stayed open. i think that's worse south of market. the boom got rid of a lot of small businesses and then there's nothing. so i think what we are looking at here is a way to support prosperous businesses that are often threatened by the boom bust cycle to help even it out some. i kind of hate the word preservation. i think it's a social continuity rather than preservation. i think we need to look at what we can

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do to support to make things easier for it and especially have the government get out of the way of for the prosperity of viable businesses. i don't think the government should be in the practice of keeping something on life support that really isn't sustainable. i think so i support the recommendation of heritage on what the hpc can do. it's really a priority to get a methodology down and look at what benefits the city can provide in terms of tax breaks and not reassessing a building that a building heritage is in, i think we can provide some incentives and look @ and see how the city can prioritize. >> would you be able to sit on a subcommittee? >> sure. yeah as an outside advisor.

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i think the hpc if you can definitely lead a way in coordinating this effort pie following what heritage is recommending. we are not talking about the public keeping dying things on life support. we are talking about having our cultural assets that aren't rolling in money and be less affected by the boom bust cycle. that's where i'm coming from. >> thank you. any other members of the public wishing to speak. please come up. >> good afternoon. my name is isabella, director of the roxy theatre. i'm here to support the recommendation by the san francisco heritage. to let you know a little bit about the roxy. it's the oldest running

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theatre in san francisco and also in the country, started in 1909. we became a non-profit in 2009. over 60,000 san francisco and bay area residented come to see movies. hope some of you have been to the roxy as well. we are community icon and cultural heritage asset. unfortunately our lease will be ending next june and with the boom cycle that was just talked about, our landlord feels that our rent should go up which means probably 25-55 percent increase which means we probably won't be able to afford. we are excited to see the strategy no. 4 which is a financial incentive and

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property acquisition for students. i -- stuart's. i think it can benefit from programs like this if they are create soon enough. it would be a tragedy to see the roxy become a gym. please promote social and cultural heritage. if there is something we can do, please let us know. >> thank you. anymore speakers? >> commissioners, i'm safely say, sugaya, i'm a resident of san francisco and that's it. [ laughter ] anyway, i would like to thank heritage and the commissioner and the department for a really great job in bringing together the whole concept of cultural preservation which

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actually extends way back even beyond the tonga room to sb 3078 which was at least 15 years ago. commissioner matsuda will remember that well. that was a legislative effort that funded cultural resource is surveys. the forerunner of what happened in japan town back when that term was not even being used by anybody else. that resulted in is surveys in los angeles, san jose and san francisco and i think the city here now is the furthest along, there may be other initiatives that i don't know about in los angeles and san jose. the ghs program was a direct result of that. that said, i think it's really important that the commission get it's handle around all of the recommendations in the report

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just to counter a little bit of what the discussion or the direction has been going in. i think you need some sticks just to purely try to depend on incentives and that kind of thing. i think it's a good idea, but it also has to accompany a little bit process and at least somewhere the city can implement things. i think it's also highly economically driven in terms of incentives and other kinds of assistance that the city can provide. i think that's where you have to expand the concept a little bit and try to get the mayor's office of economic and workforce development involved. they do have a neighborhood initiative going. they have a sign by japan down. in any case, that's where some of the

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economic muscle lies. i woulden currently you to communicate with them at some fashion and also support what mr. martinez had to say. >> mr. sugaya, do you have time now to serve on the subcommittee? >> i just got my weekends. >> we are not talking weekends, we are not talking all sorts of reports. >> sure. >> thank you. any other member of the public wish to speak on this item, seeing none, >> carl. >> i want to make a point that at the rocky theatre tomorrow night. >> okay. we'll close public comment. mr. frye. >> commissioners, tim frye. i want to show you the support of the report. we work closely with heritage

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and appreciate them keeping us involved in the development of the report. we think it's great document. certainly support creation of a subcommittee and agree with the recommendations and think there is a lot of potential there that we can come up with some really creative ways to further the goals outlined in the document. >> commissioner wolfram. >> it looks like i missed it, your priorities for hpc action on the slide, is that in the packet as well? >> it is not. >> maybe we can get that. it's kind of hard to read on the slide. >> okay. sure. >> there is one copy. i don't know. >> maybe we can get that. >> sure. >> commissioner pearlman in >> thank you.

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it's fascinating. i drive by jordan's bar. i haven't gone in to have a drink, but i think it's significant in our city to have these places. i wanted to agree with something mr. sugaya said about the issue because where the he land is where the roxy is so astronomical and to keep the roxy there, you know probably will not equal what a landowner can get in economic return for getting rid of these places and the gold dust was one of these places. again, i don't know what that is. if there is a little bit of regulatory action as opposed to a lot of regulatory action, but somehow, even if it's just a moratorium to allow a business to maybe initiate